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27 August 2013

Aliette de Bodard, author of Immersion, on writer boot camp, languages and breaking through in sci-fi

As part of Paris Writers News' series on women science fiction writers, Barry Kirwan, author of The Eden Paradox Novels, sat down to talk with Aliette de Bodard, author of award winning speculative fiction and novels, including 'Immersion' (Nebula and Locus awards), 'The Shipmaker' (British Science Fiction Award) and 'The Jaguar House, In Shadow' (nominated for both Hugo and Nebula). Born in the USA but raised in France, Aliette writes in English. Here is Barry's report.

We met for the interview in a Starbucks café near La Motte Piquet in sweltering Paris, where most French residents (there aren’t many tourists in the 15th arrondissement) were soaking up the sunshine on brasserie terrasses in front of sweating beer glasses, summer finally having arrived with a vengeance. We stayed inside, taking advantage of the air conditioning, and got straight down to business.

I started by noting that Wikipedia described Aliette as a ‘speculative fiction’ writer, rather than a science fiction writer, wondering if that was her assessment. It was. She explained that science fiction was too narrow, as some SF pundits would not include alternative realities, or anything including time travel, for example, or even any romance as being ‘true’ science fiction.

I asked if she tried to write for a specific genre, and she replied that she’d done it once but it didn’t work for her; best to write something and then decide which genre it fit into later, when trying to place it in a magazine.

I then got straight to the main question I wanted to ask, about the short story Immersion, which won both Nebula (2012) and Locus (2013) awards for best short story in science fiction (you can read it herecourtesy of Clarkesworld Magazine). It is set in the future when many people and ‘Galactics’ use ‘immersers’, projecting themselves into the real world via avatars. But for one particular woman, the immerser seems to be malfunctioning. The broader theme appeared to me to be about colonialism. I’d been impressed by its unusual take on avatars and wanted to know where the ideas had come from. She laughed and said she went to Vietnam and got very angry. Aliette went on to explain that she had taken her husband there to show him the country, and found to her dismay that McDonalds had just opened up shop, and everywhere the main tea on offer seemed to be Liptons. She also had some guidebooks, and remarked how strange it was to be in your own family's country trying to explain things to somebody via guidebooks, with many small things not quite right.

After about two months she’d got the basic story down but couldn’t decide how to end it. As a deadline approached, she wrote part of it in the second person. That ended up being thrown away, but it gave her the idea for how to finish it. She ran it past her face-to-face critique group, and they loved it, and then it got accepted a while later.

Was she surprised to get the Nebula? She’d been told of her nomination, and was anyway going to the award ceremony, but after travelling long haul while being pregnant, when she finally arrived at the ceremony – which is a bit like the Oscars – what was mainly on her mind was sleep. After some time her name was announced, and she accepted the award, pulling out first an old ticket stub instead of her notes, then she gave her acceptance speech, and got to bed. One of those times you get to enjoy it more after the event.

Did these awards change her writing, or how she thought of herself as a writer? No. Did she want to become a full-time writer? Again, no, she preferred keeping a balance in her life, even referring to her writing as a ‘hobby’, though I was continually impressed with her professional approach to her craft. I also sensed she had very high writing standards, a ‘driven’ perseverance and perfectionism.

On her writing process, Aliette said she writes mainly in the evenings after work, or at the weekends, though sometimes she ends up doing emails, sending off stories, etc. Her mother tongue is French (her English is flawless) so I asked her if she would write fiction in French. She said no, because she had learned to write fiction in English. Asked which language she would read a novel in – French or English – she replied the language it was originally written in. Was she interested in writing normal fiction, i.e. without the speculative aspect? No.

A turning point for her writing in English had come when she attended a writers ‘boot camp’ led by top SF author Orson Scott Card (he wrote Enders Game, soon to be released as a Hollywood blockbuster), in America. Until that point she had lacked confidence, but Card’s direct no-nonsense approach, and his focus on what made good commercial science fiction, got her through that barrier. I remarked that her writing is not like Card’s, and is more expressive, wondering where that came from. She replied that she used to read English Language poetry and epic poems, such as an abridged version of the Indian classic the Mahabarata, and liked to bring some of that style of poetic description into her writing.

I wanted to know how she had become the successful writer she is today, and so asked about her ‘writing journey’. She had had a lucky break with Harper Collins imprint Angry Robot some time ago (you can read about it here) but I sensed there was much more to it than that. Aliette said she started writing and then getting critiques mainly from online forums like Critters, Writers of the Future, and several other online writer workshops. She found some of them gave such varied feedback that they were not helpful, but Writers of the Future was, and she now had a particular online group of six or seven published writers she worked with. However, back in the early days she wrote two novels that never have – and never will (she smiled) – see the light of day, buried as they are in her bottom drawer. After the deal with Angry Robot which got her Obsidian & Blood novels published, she switched to short stories. It took four years to break through and start getting them published (fellow SF writers take note!), but once it began, it was easier to keep going.

I asked if she wrote more than one project at a time. If a novel, then no, as they require a lot of immersion. Maybe if she was working on a short story she could handle two. When she writes, she does so in concentrated periods where she can focus and not be distracted. Happily, her husband is into gaming…

I asked her about sexism in the industry, whether she agreed that female characters in SF got a raw deal. She did, mentioning that she’d read somewhere that having an all-female cast in an SF book can be seen as a deterrent, whereas an all-male cast with a token woman is nothing particular to remark on, and often females seem to be there simply to be rescued, or far worse, raped. But she shrugged it off, saying the industry will eventually crawl its way to a better balance. It would help if SF writers read a bit more outside the genre, and SF readers should be a bit more accepting, not just looking for explosions and trophy women. And, in answer to a related, highly topical question, yes, a female Dr Who would help the cause. Definitely!

What next? An urban fantasy (read the opening passage here) set in Paris, where many years ago there was a war between magicians and angels that devastated the city of light, and now someone is in danger of stirring it all up again… As with any writer describing a book they are just beginning, her eyes light up and I can catch the excitement, but she laughs and says it’s just started, she’s happy now and having fun with it, but she’ll have to slog through that difficult ‘middle’ part of the book sooner or later to get it finished.

But I can already tell it’s going to be good. When Aliette looks at you there’s an intensity that, coupled with a honed talent, makes here a top writer rubbing shoulders with the greats. What next? What next indeed…

Barry Kirwan writes Science Fiction short stories and novels and is the author of the four books of The Eden Paradox series. Born in Farnborough, England and currently living in France, Barry did a doctorate in Human Reliability Assessment, which concerns predicting future behavior using psychological techniques and data. Barry has worked on the safety of nuclear power plants, offshore oil and gas platforms, and more recently air traffic, and has publishes several books in the safety arena. (See his books here.)

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Aliette de Bodard, author of Immersion, on writer boot camp, languages and breaking through in sci-fi

As part of Paris Writers News' series on women science fiction writers, Barry Kirwan, author of The Eden Paradox Novels, sat down to talk with Aliette de Bodard, author of award winning speculative fiction and novels, including 'Immersion' (Nebula and Locus awards), 'The Shipmaker' (British Science Fiction Award) and 'The Jaguar House, In Shadow' (nominated for both Hugo and Nebula). Born in the USA but raised in France, Aliette writes in English. Here is Barry's report.